Re: The window-pub branch

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > Feedback wise I'd note that I was not pleased to see two of three
 > entries I made to 'display-buffer-names' not work.  As a user if
 > I write (new-window (root . left)) and then the new window still
 > opens on bottom, I have better things to do.

If this doesn't work there's a bug in the code.  You could have tried to
debug where and how it fails :-(

 > In any case however it seems like a pretty bad idea to scatter
 > these specifiers all over the elisp code (whether explicitly
 > passed as parameters or implicitly with all sort of bizarre long
 > convenience function names.)
 >
 > Why is it not possible to have one single function that takes no
 > specifiers and that is used by all applications with no difference,
 > in combination with pre-configured entries in 'display-buffer-names'
 > to get the desired behavior for specific applications.
 >
 > This would be transparent, prove the power of the design, and as a
 > user I can read the real-use entries and learn from them and alter
 > them if I wish.

I didn't intend to write these "convenience functions" in the first
place.  I wrote them when I found out that people mostly reused code
they found elsehwere because it apparently fitted their needs.  I could
replace these functions by pre-configured entries but how should an
application select such an entry for a specific call?

Note also that the argument in `display-buffer' is already there and I
already ignore the third argument.

Specifiers are powerful because an application can specify where the
window shall appear and how it should look like.  This was not possible
before.  And wasn't it you who wanted to replace `set-window-buffer' and
`split-window' with `display-buffer' calls?  How could an application
encompass the power of the former by choosing among some pre-configured
entries?

 > I'd maybe rather spend 3 days in one box to remove some restrictions
 > first before I spend 10 months in the other box to work around them.

I decided to spend 3 days to work around things in a box I'm familiar
with instead of working 3 months changing things in a box whose
internals I don't know well enough.

martin